


In Search of Ashes

by Coldest_Fire



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate universe - love spell, Angst, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode s03e08 Lover's Walk, F/M, IE: spike remembers the scene in destiny, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Love Potion/Spell, Love spells don't make love, Spike and Dru make things work but I don't gloss over the love spell, Spike does not go through with anything while she's under the spell, minor mind control?, that's not a thing that would've been okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29191347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: Spike gives in and persuades Willow to cast the love spell, to bring Drusilla back to him once and for all--after all, their love was eternal, and all she has to do is put it back. What could possibly go wrong?Everything. As Willow warned him, love spells can't make real love.Something was wrong when she seemed disoriented. “Love?” He called, getting up and running to her. She didn’t know where he was—she couldn’t see him through the walls. When he ran to her, she flung herself into his arms, tucking her face into his coat and breathing him in. “Words all over the town, like you tossed your pages into the wind and I forgot how to read."
Relationships: Drusilla/Spike (BtVS)
Kudos: 7





	In Search of Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> this is another rewrite of another really old work. On my fanfic profile, it's another piece we all wrote as a birthday gift, in 2014! here is the old (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10112997/1/Four-things-you-never-knew-about-French) and you can really see how I've changed as a writer! Wow. So the first big difference is the resolution--Dru's been through a lot, and this would be hugely not okay between them, because for the impact it would have on her visions, and also because this would...not... be the first time someone has fucked with her head to get her to stay with him. I needed the resolution to take more time, and I needed it to not be perfect. 
> 
> I also needed to talk about the why she left, which, you taste like ashes, as a s7 reference. And I think the end is hopeful. Maybe there'll even be a series the spins off it, how they have to work with team slayer to prevent the Hellmouth from opening so he doesn't have to die. 
> 
> So yeah. It's hopeful but imperfect, and it might get a sequel, which I like.

He was a shell of himself when he did it, not that it excused him. Spike, half drunk, half mad, half empty for want of her stood in front of a large stone coffin, while Willow, rather conspicuously dressed in a very large, fluffy sweater finished up the spell. It was easy enough to do—all she needed was something that was Dru’s, once they had the ingredients, and he’d sufficiently threatened her. He resisted the urge to tell Willow to use him until she came up with it on her own. “So, she sired you, right? Which means in the weird vampire way, you’re something of hers, I think?”

He took another drink, before admitting, a little deflated, “I’ve always been hers.”

Willow patted him on the shoulder, and then grabbed his hand, and pricked his thumb without warning, squeezing it and letting a couple drops of blood fall into a little cup she had off to the side, then lit a candle beside it. “There we go. So, uh, okay. The way these work, it’s important when I start doing the spell that your intent is pure, okay. Like whatever you want, you have to want it with conviction, okay. Uh, usually is’s like…love, forever, but as a vampire, that’s really literal, so just…”

“Our love was _eternal._ I just need you to put it back,” he insisted. Willow shook her head. “Okay. So think about that. Now, drink down.” He did as he was told, and Willow picked up a bowl of some kind of red paste. She got him to stop to the side, and drew a symbol on the ground. “Take your shirt off.” And he smirked but complied. Willow didn’t seem like she had the stones to get him to strip if it wasn’t necessary.

“May your broken heart be here mended,” she read, eyes on the page as she streaked some of the paste down the middle of his chest. “Tell me out loud what your intention is?” She asked.

He chose his words carefully, though not as carefully as he would have were he not nearly stumbling over drunk. “Drusilla, love, we talked about this. You always favoured the pen over the sword. No more glass. No more violent delights. I want you to spend forever beside me, like we always wanted. I want you to love me like we did every day until last summer. Be mine the way I’m yours. Only mine, and I can be your knight again.”

Willow drew two more vertical stripes beside the one in the middle of his chest. She got up, leaving him on the floor, and then stoking the flames a bit more, before starting the spell. “Diana... goddess of love and the hunt... I pray to thee. Let my cries bind the heart of Spike's beloved.” She poured the couple drops of his blood into the fire. Spike thought it was interesting. Her blood brought them together, now his would.

“May she neither rest nor sleep until she submits to his will only,” she said, and the flame engulfed the little cauldron she had atop it. Spike didn’t like that wording. That should have been the first thing that seemed wrong, but his will, as he’d declared it was just reciprocity and coming back to him. His will wasn’t an ordeal. It would be fine. It had to be.

“Diana, bring about this love and bless it,” Willow said. Spike decided that was what it was. The magic swirled around Willow, and then dissipated, and she told him, “I need you to blow this candle out, if you’re sure this is what you want.”

Spike blew the candle instantly, and Willow scooped a little of the liquid into a small vial, and then poured the wax from the candle over it to seal it. Willow had handed him a little vial of what looked approximately like dirty water, sealed with wax. “If you need to break the spell, for any reason, just, uh,” and she mimed throwing it at the ground.

“Why would I ever want to break it?” He asked, “I’m not like your little friend there,” he motioned to the semi-conscious Xander. “I’m not doing this so she can know what it felt like waking up without her. I’m in _love_ with her,” and his voice broke the faintest bit. He’d _meant_ it.

Willow noodled, a flurry of movement, “yeah! Yeah, I get that. Just, sometimes magic goes funky, and- and it’s hard…well, it’s impossible to _make_ love. Or, I guess in the with spells way, and not in the really, really sixties way. So, uh, the spell is the next best thing, and-” she trailed off.

“You don’t wake up one day, after hundreds of years, and stop loving someone. We _had_ love. I didn’t need you to _make_ anything, I just needed you to put it back!” he insisted.

Willow looked at the ground, and bit her lip. “Well, this’ll put _her_ back,” she said, trying to find the closest thing to the truth that would get her out alive. He didn’t care what she said anyway. She didn’t know them. They were _eternal_. All he needed was to see her again, and they could fix it.

Spike wiped red gunk off his chest while Willow helped Xander to his feet and lead him out. Things were going to be normal again.

***

“Spike?” He heard her voice, soft in the door to the factory, “William?” She tried. It had been a long time since she’d called him that. There was a waver to her voice, uncertainty. “The stars are all muddy, and I can’t hear them,” she said plaintively, “had to rely on pixies and paper trails, and you left too many words around the city…Couldn’t string your words together,” she mumbled.

When Spike saw her, she was standing in the doorway, looking around more uncertain than he’d ever seen her. It was like she was only half-understanding what was around her. No one else—her sire in particular—would have noticed, because no one knew how _present_ she was. She knew where she was, saw things others couldn’t begin to. She knew things, knew people, knew the histories hidden in the places they went, the things that might, but hadn’t happened. She saw into them. She’d plucked the words from the torn shreds of poetry before she’d even looked him in the eyes.

Something was _wrong_ when she seemed disoriented. “Love?” He called, getting up and running to her. She didn’t know where he was—she couldn’t see him through the walls. When he ran to her, she flung herself into his arms, tucking her face into his coat and breathing him in. “Words all over the town, like you tossed your pages into the wind and I forgot how to read. Shapes, and letters, and symbols, and all I could feel was you while the pixies matched them up,” she told him, speaking into his unbeating heart.

This was heaven. He feels as though he might cry, running his fingers through her hair, feeling the void between his open arms filled with her. Her body fit so perfectly against his. Her head on his heart. That was always hers. Even when she left without breaking it properly so he’d stop feeling it. “How could you?” He asked, voice barely leaving his throat, “you—I was—” he couldn’t quite get the words out.

She put her finger to his lips, and made a soft ‘shhh’ noise. “Your words weren’t on fire and I couldn’t taste them,” she assured him, “if you lit them up, would I taste them?” She asked, her eyes unfocused as she pulled his head down and kissed him ,as though searching for ash in his mouth. Their lips were together, and it felt like…

It felt like it wasn’t her.

He opened his eyes in time to feel her lips trailing down his neck to the scars from the night she sired him. She nipped at them, and he asked, a little breathless, “what are you doing, love?”

She made another shhh noise, “trying to find the ashes,” she whispered, “perhaps if I search everywhere....” she tore his shirt open, lips finding his collarbone, “I’ll even find atonement with them,” she whispered, tearing it lower, then running her hands up his thighs.

It should have felt good, having her hands on him again. The passion, the love. She hadn’t wanted it, after they left Sunnyhell. He assumed a lot of it was because of Angelus, and then that it was about the ashes she tasted. He’d never figured out what they meant—perhaps that he was a traitor, though she’d never before objected to anything that undermined her sire—now would be a bizarre time to start, when he was trying to do exactly what he’d done to her to the slayer.

Shirt fully destroyed, he felt almost out of body, watching her lips trail down his body—last time she’d done this, he was in chains and she took her time. This seemed wrong. This seemed more like what she was taught to do that what she’d ever wanted. She sunk to her knees, looking up at him with unfocused eyes. She looked like she did that night after he was sired, like a doll, a careless array of limbs and glassy eyes. Like she was disembodied, and floating.

_It’s impossible to make love._

Her hands fumbled with his zipper. He felt like he was going to throw up, even if he wasn’t sure vampires could. “Love!” He recoiled, “Drusilla, stop, please!” His eyes were full of tears, and he leapt back like her hands were burning him.

Her eyes, still hazy met his from the floor, “I…is it not enough?” She asked, crestfallen.

Before she could say anything else he’d be hearing for the rest fo eternity, he cut era off, “I don’t want to do that to you. _Ever._ Something’s wrong with the stars, and we need to fix that so you can hear again.” He knelt down beside her, taking off his jacket and putting it around her shoulders, “I love you. I will always love you. There’s nothing for you to make up for,” he assured her, “nothing for you to, and so much I need to make up for. Please love, I need you to know that I didn’t understand what I was doing. Red told me, and I didn’t want to believe it. I know you’re going to resent what I’ve done. I already do, trust me. I know you’re going to leave. I need you to know I can’t do that to you. I need you to know people can still be safe, and that not everyone—no one but _him_ , would want to do that. I need the world not to turn to ash, even if you want me to.”

He put a stake in her hand. She had every right to use it.

She stared at him, for once confused by his words, but nestling into his coat. Spike pulled the little bottle from his pocket and threw it at the wall, disgusted with himself and with the spell. The contempt echoed off the walls. Shattering glass. How painfully fitting.

He closed his eyes. It was cowardly, but he couldn’t stand to see her go, and if she wanted to stake him, it meant she didn’t have to look him in the eyes and kill him. That would be hard for her.

He heard her make a soft sound, like the air hissing from her lungs, then hit the ground. He opened his eyes and rushed to her side, picking her up and laying her in his bed. He didn’t have much for blankets, but he gave her his coat, and whatever else he had. He moved the candles away from the bed—sometimes when she was disoriented, she was a bit of a danger to herself. He wasn’t sure how thorough the spell was—when she woke, he wasn’t certain she’d know where she was.

He did what he used to when she had a vision, or a flashback. Keep as much in the room the same as he could. Get her into a bed. Stay close but don’t touch her. The only difference is that he used to talk to her while she came back. There had been too much of him in her head already. He stayed silent, even if he tried to think of what he’d say when she woke up.

He was no closer to something to say an hour later, when she regained consciousness than he was when he started. He didn’t have words. She sat up abruptly, then looked around herself, from the bed. She clapped her hands over her ears, and tipped down, shaking her head. “You’re _too loud_ , I can’t hear you!” She insisted, curling into a ball, “All screaming all at once.”

Spike made no attempt to touch her, but he said, “love?”

She didn’t reply, “Stop. Stop stop, you’re being _cruel,”_ she cried out, and he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him, or the stars whose voices returned.

She uncurled slowly, and looked at him, her eyes almost teary, hollow. There was nothing in there for him but pity, “searched for ashes when I couldn’t read words, or hear the stars,” she told him, sliding back on the bed away from him, “told you that the worst of the swords cut the strings and went inside. Why would you run glass though my head?” She asked him, “did you finally want your own violent ends?”

He knew what that meant, just like he knew what she was doing before he broke it. What it looked like. She was asking if he’d wanted not just to use her, but to hurt her. Violent delights and violent ends were both things she talked about her sire caring for greatly, especially when he was first learning what went on in that house. What Angelus had done. He’d been horrified. It was the first time he’d seen the woman he’d called a goddess look like a doll. Glassy eyes and splayed limbs, like she wasn’t in her body.

“I-” he couldn’t get words to pass his throat, “love, I- couldn’t…” he had no defence for what he did.

Her eyes narrowed, “ _didn’t,”_ she corrected, “the stars can’t tell me about could.”

He stared at her in abject horror, that the woman he’d once gone to the ends of the earth to protect now couldn’t tell if he’d hurt her like her sire had if she decided she didn’t want him any longer. She rose from the bed slowly, not taking her eyes off him until they were face to face. “Tell me why,” she plead, “what was enough?”

He shook his head, his voice caught in his throat, “I just wanted to see you again.”

Her hand cracked across his face, enough that his cheek was numb a second before it started to sting. Three footsteps rang out through the halls before he couldn’t hear her, then the slam of the door, and then the mark on his face was all that was left of her.

***

Three days passed.

Spike was a wreck, but he didn’t leave the factory. Didn’t drink either. He didn’t want to try to run from what he was feeling. He’d hurt her. He’d gone inside her head, to try to force her not to leave him—she was right, that was no better than her sire, even if he hadn’t laid a hand on her. He felt like a different person than he’d ever wanted to be.

He lay, in ashes, and wondered if that was what she’d meant—did she taste the ash of the factory off him, and see what he’d do, and that he’d be here after? That he’d _crumble_. Maybe ashes were the hallmark of betrayal.

The door clicked—did the slayer finally decide he was too much of a threat to the Sunnydale sign? Had Angel come to grandstand at him again about her being _fickle_ or about how he and Buffy were actually friends, or to pull the _this town isn’t big enough for the two of us_ speech like he was coming form a second rate western. Spike hoped it was him. He’d send him right back to Hell where he belonged. Even with a soul, he didn’t have the morality to understand that being around the slayer was a danger to the entire world—what if _being her friend_ made him happy enough his soul left his body.

Spike was, either way, ready to fight whatever came in.

Which is why he dropped his stake when it was _her._ Drusilla looked worse for the wear. She had some kind of burn on her arm. Enough that he wondered if she’d had a run-in with the slayer, or if she’d wandered into the nearest church. Either way, she stood before him, the hem of her white dress the slightest bit muddied. She sat back on a beam, and looked above his head for a moment, before she told him, “you were always to taste like ashes—from the moment you decided. It was supposed to be so long, but you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t try. All was ashes, or you were ashes,” she said, biting her lip a little when she spoke.

“It wasn’t fair, that I should have to choose between my hells. Wasn’t fair that once I did, I had to create it. But the stars are cross, and everything is ashes now. I can taste them. Breathe them. You don’t have the spark yet, but you will, and all it does is burn—you told me. I didn’t want it, but there wasn’t another way—not one that would work. It’s going to drink us in It was cruel of me to make a trade,” she paused, “it was cruel of you to toy with my mind. Make everything taste of fire and brimstone, but I’ve lost all taste. They gave you my strings, and you swore you’d cut them. I never saw it in you to pull.”

Spike, who’d been trying to follow, figured there was some sort of trade—him for the world. He knew what else she’d meant, in her accusation, “I…I can’t prove anything. You see more than I could ever know,” he started, “I told the witch that you loved me, and that all she had to do was put it back. I… you can see how I felt, if you want. Your eyes turned to glass. You were lost. The stars were gone.”

“You couldn’t.” She said, “the words in your head are seeping out of you. All those years, and you still can’t be the sword,” she said, almost surprised, and rose from the beam, taking a couple steps closer. “I want another way,” she said plaintively.

He offered her his hand, surprised when she took it, and more surprised when the ring he’d given her more than a century ago was still on her finger. “Then I’ll help you find one,” he agreed, “no ashes, no brimstone, and if we can’t…” he bit his lip, and sucked in a breath before he said, “then the choice is yours again.”

She climbed over the foot of the bed, got in, and lay beside him, pulling him down to lie beside her. It wasn’t the same. He didn’t know what was right anymore—he did as he had at the start, when faced with the same confusion, and let her lead him. She rolled over to face him, and stroked the hand not holding his down one side of his face. “Come and see the stars before they fall.”

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah, also the spell, starting at the invocation to Diana is from BBB, which I also have a minor rewrite of coming--which, By minor, I mean one scene, and then part of becoming. There are also references to These Violent Delights, which is my post-Destiny fic. also, lowkey, I have the noble goal of overtaking spike/angel in the pairings listing on the fandom, so you might be seeing a lot of me--the gap is only like... 40? fics.


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